Fast food companies use marketing tactics to encourage unhealthy eating. They train marketers to understand how people make quick decisions based on stimuli like colors and words. Unhealthy foods high in carbohydrates, trans fats and sugars lack important nutrients, which can negatively impact physical and cognitive development, especially in children. While some studies conflict, frequent fast food consumption is generally linked to poorer health and quality of life compared to nutritious home-cooked meals.

1. The Enigma of
“Healthy” Eating
Written and presented by Stephanie Allen

2. Food and Development
• Food is important for physical development and growth throughout your entire life
• It’s no secret that you can’t go long without it. It’s an absolute necessity
• But when you eat, are you eating solely for the nourishing qualities that your food
source provides? Or are you eating to be happy, console yourself, or because you
may have a sort of “connection” to the food? (Point about sugary and high-fat foods
attributed to Freeman 2225)
• Your adolescent brain has everything to do with what foods you do and don’t like,
even as you have become a (young) adult.
• Elaborated information originally documented by Fernando Gomez and chocolate point by
David Benton and Rachel T Donohoe

3. Healthy Eating
• The USDA and Department of Health and Human Services have done a lot
of research in order to create “dietary guidelines” that they deem fit for the
American population
• They have created a basic chart for age, gender, and activity rate to predict how many
calories you should be having a day– 2,000 for me

5. Marketing Tactics To Fool You
• Marketers are trained to know how people unconsciously process stimuli
• Colors; red and yellow combos, and cool blue hues (Magoulas 11,12)
• 90 second decisions– more people eat more of these high-in-trans-fat foods (Freeman
2225)
• There was even a study done by the Department of Marketing and
International Management in Austria about word choices and their effects on
consumerism (340).
• Word choice can be misleading- Wendy’s “Natural cut fries”

6. Our Children and Their Food Habits
• Since your brain creates those reward pathways, it’s important to feed your kids good
delicious food that is also healthy for them. The fast food market has boomed and more and
more people are making fast food a daily choice, and they will pass those choices on to their
kids
• I’ve already mentioned that your eating habits will stick around, so not only are kids being
exposed to poor eating choices now that their parents find it quick and easy to get fast food
rather than cook at home, a study by Fernando Gomez also found that your eating habits
can be passed down for generations (Diet and Epigenetics, Gomez)
• Gomez also cites research that showed positive cognitive, behavioral, and motor skill
development when children were supplemented nutrients daily- girls affected more (Effects of
Nutrients on Cognition)

7. Fast Food and Nutrition
• Fast food products are food products that are cooked, preserved, frozen, shipped,
thawed, and then cooked again and eaten by a customer. The second “cooking”
process is done much faster– usually in under two minutes, to allow speed of
service for a company
• On a large scale; already expensive so cut down on the expense by preserving and chemical
creation
• Fast food companies will do anything to make you think you’re eating healthier
products because it has a logical appeal- eating healthier so you can eat more of it.
• DD has “DD SmartChoice” combos- explain

8. Fast Food and Nutrition, continued
• Freeman notes that a lot of “healthier/natural” ingredients in fast food
preserved items are actually worse for you (2225-2226)
• These products affect your brain and your body independently (Nutrient
Effects, Gomez)
• Fast foods are high in carbohydrates, trans-fats, saturated fats, sugars, and
salts. They generally lack important vitamins such as the A, B, C, D, E, and K
vitamins that have been found in multiple experiments to be important for
healthy neural and physical development (Gomez)

9. Complications
• Some studies show conflicting results, especially when it comes to the mental
implications of certain nutrients.
• Mentally depressed people are more or less effected by certain nutrients
• USDA and HHS can’t even decide on the proper intake of some chemicals
and nutrients
• Refer to bottle and the cross on nutrition label

10. So What’s the Point?
Fast food companies are concerned with the health of their consumers. They train
their marketers to know how to make a consumer do what their name entitles-
consume. The use every possible tactic (colors, word choice, placement, etc) to make
someone make that choice to buy their product
Because your brain reacts to the comfort foods or unhealthy foods in a way that makes
you “happy” and/or releases dopamine or serotonin, you like the food and you want
to eat more of it to feel the “high” that you get when you eat that food
If people would eat more nutritious foods instead of unhealthy fast foods that
they are compelled to eat, they would be happier, healthier, smarter, and would
have a better quality of life.

11. Works Cited
• Davidson, Karen M and Bonnie J Kaplan. “Nutrient Intakes Are Correlated With Overall Psychiatric
Functioning in Adults With Mood Disorders.” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 57.2 (2012): 85-92. Web. 15
Mar. 2015.
• Freeman, Andrea. “Fast Food: Oppression through Poor Nutrition.” California Law Review 95.6 (2007):
2220-2260. Web. 19 Mar 2015.
• Gómez-Pinilla, Fernando. “Brain Foods: The Effects of Nutrients on Brain Function.” Nature reviews.
Neuroscience 9.7 (2008): 568-578. PMC. Web. 13 Mar. 2015.
• Kaplan, Bonnie et. al. “The Emerging Field of Nutritional Mental Health: Inflammation, The Microbiome,
Oxidative Stress, and Mitochondrial Function.” Clinical Psychological Science. 2 Feb. 2015: 1-17. SAGE. Web.
13 Mar. 2015.
• Magoulas, Costa. How color affects food choices. Diss. University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2009. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.
PDF.